Voter ID: ‘good’ elections or a mugging?

Gov. Rick Perry defended the state’s controversial Voter ID law Friday during on a Fox news interview when he complained about interference from the federal government.

The Justice Department on Monday rejected the state’s Voter ID law because state officials failed to demonstrate the election changes would not make it harder for minorities to vote. Because of historic discrimination against minority voters, federal law requires Texas to prove its case before making any election changes.

Gov. Rick Perry

Texas is suing to overturn the 1965 law.

“Here we are in 2012 and the idea that somehow or another a southern state, Texas in particular, a state that is a majority minority in our public schools now, is somehow or another being discriminatory toward minorities, I think, is a vestige of fear tactics that have been used through the years, and frankly, don’t hold water anymore,” Perry said in the interview.

“This is not a Democratic or Republican issue,” the governor added. “Any person who does not want to see fraud believes in having good, open and honest elections – transparent. And one of the best ways to do that is having photo identification so you prove you are who you say you are, and you keep those elections fraud free.”

The vote to pass the bill into law, however, reflected a strong partisan perspective.

All 19 Texas Senate Republicans voted for it last year while all 12 Democrats opposed the bill. In the House, the key vote saw 100 Republicans and 1 Democrat supporting the bill. All 48 dissenting votes came from Democrats.

Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, acknowledges that voter fraud exists.

Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston

“No one disputes that. However, what every investigation has proven is that the kind of fraud voter ID laws would address — voter impersonation — doesn’t really exist. In fact, there are more UFO and Bigfoot sightings than documented cases of voter impersonation,” Ellis said.

“Literally millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent in Texas, South Carolina and across the country chasing the white whale that is voter impersonation,” Ellis said. “Several years ago, Texas supporters announced there was an ‘epidemic’ of this kind of voter fraud, launched an investigation and found nothing of the sort. They found 26 cases to prosecute and two-thirds of those were simple technical violations, not fraud and not one of the 26 would have been affected by a voter ID requirement. It is just a coincidence, I’m sure, that all 26 cases were brought against African American or Hispanic voters.”

Perry told his Fox news audience Texas has “multiple cases of voter fraud in various places across the state,” according to legislative testimony.

But the evidence of voter impersonation, which the Voter ID law addresses, is sketchy.

In the 2010 general election, the Texas attorney general’s office received 7 allegations of election law violations, according to statistics the office provided to state Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas. Four of those seven cases involved mail-in ballots, which the Voter ID law does not address.

One of the 2010 general election alleged violations involved “unlawfully rejecting a voter, another involved “campaign finance violations” and the other dealt with “obtaining voter registration applications prior to being deputized, failing to timely deliver voter registration applications, false statement on voter registration and tampering with a governmental record”.

Nearly 5 million ballots were cast in the 2010 general election.

The 2008 election law violation allegations in the document provided to Anchia: “electioneering within 100 ft mark at a polling place,” “citizen not allowed to vote by an election worker,” “vote soliciting bribery on the internet (eBay),” “Unlawfully released police reports and narratives on one of the candidates running for sheriff (in Wichita County),” “providing false information on a voter registration application,” “ineligible to hold the office of county clerk (Terry County),” “Unlawful assistance, unlawfully influencing a voter and illegal voting,” “Unlawfully prevented from voting,” “Solicitation of campaign funds while on duty, selling of campaign fundraiser tickets while on duty and misuse of county employees while on county time,” “illegal voting,” “death row inmates registering to vote,” “non-citizen voted in election,” “election misconduct,” and “unlawful candidacy (Tarrant County).”

More than 8million Texans voted in the 2008 general election.

“The only thing that I can put out is that there is obviously those who would like to fraudulently impact elections and, therefore, they are against having a photo ID. Otherwise, it makes all the sense in the world. And we have put in place ways for people to get those IDs,” Perry said in the interview.

The state will provide DPS voter ID cards for at least 600,000 registered voters who don’t have a Texas driver’s license.

But getting those cards could be difficult for those who live in 73 Texas counties without any DPS driver’s license office – or in inner city communities that also lack access to a driver’s license office.

“The sad truth is that there is now a concerted all-out assault on the right to vote in this country, and minority and elderly voters are the ones being mugged,” Ellis said.